Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Dime novel spreadsheets.

What I'd thought would be a relatively quick diversion--putting together spreadsheets of pulp magazine data as an analytical tool--has turned into something of a prolonged ordeal, since simply inputting the data took a while, and I had to ask others to put the data together in table form. And, even worse, after completing the pulps, I decided I had to do the dime novels--'cause, well, if I left it at the pulps the data would be incomplete, right?

So I finished up the dime novels. The data isn't complete, because I'm not sure a complete list of dime novels is possible any more, but this is the best that can be put together at this remove.

Interesting, how long the dime novels lasted. I had the vague sense that the dime novels survived a lot longer than the popular image of them has it, but as late as 1932, well into the pulp era, there were still 11 dime novels. I think we can say with some confidence that, as with the pulps, the "death" of the dime novel was a prolonged thing with significant overlap into the pulp era.

Even more interesting to me is a comparison of number of magazines versus duration between the pulps and the dime novels. Many more pulps lasting a much shorter period of time, while the dime novels tended to be fewer in number but have a lot more endurance. 14 dime novels had over 1,000 issues, and look at New York Weekly: almost 3,000 issues, 1858-1915. A smaller market with fewer publishers leads to less overall competition and more monopolization, I guess. Certainly fewer dime novel subgenres than with the pulps.

I imagine that the feelings of the dime novel publishers in the 1920s and 1930s was something like the feelings of the Neanderthals when they watched Cro Magnons running around.

I thought romance dime novels would be stronger. Conversely, I'm surprised (though I shouldn't be) at the strength of frontier/Western dime novels.

My surprise is not that there are relatively few sports dime novels, but that there are as many as there are. The British influence is particularly noticeable here.

I suspect an analysis of the war dime novels published around the time of the Spanish-American War would make for interesting reading.

Now that I'm finished with these, I'm starting on European pulps, which may take me a few days to complete.